The 2023-24 World Alpine Skiing Championships will have no parallel races and will debut a new team alpine combined event.
Organizers also confirmed other previously proposed changes for next season, including no women’s race in Lake Louise, Canada, and spreading the season-ending World Cup Finals over two weekends.
The season begins as usual with the women’s and men’s giant slalom in Sölden, Austria, at the end of October.
For the first time since at least 2009-10, there are no parallel races on the schedule. Last season, the one men’s and women’s parallel stop was canceled due to the weather. Individual and team parallel events were held at the biennial world championships last February with some stars leapfrogging them.
The IOC said last spring that the team’s parallel event, which was on the Olympic program in 2018 and 2022, has been dropped for 2026.
At the annual men’s World Cup stop in January in Kitzbuehel, Austria, an alpine combined team event has been added.
A combined team event, in which a nation uses a different skier for the sprint and slalom races, had been proposed for debut.
The individual combined, which has been an individual event on the Olympic program since 1988, will go a fourth straight season without being scheduled at the World Championships. The IOC said last June that the combined was provisionally included in the 2026 Olympic program, subject to further review. Individual combined is still on the world championship program.
Lake Louise has traditionally hosted men’s and women’s speed races in late November and early December. But this year, the women’s race has been replaced with another stop in Canada – two giant slaloms at Mont Tremblant in Quebec. It will be the first time since 1993-94 that the Women’s World Cup will not have races in Lake Louise, except for the pandemic-hit 2020-21 season.
In 2018, Lake Louise announced that its downhill course would be renamed “Lake Lindsey Way” after Lindsey Vonnwho earned 18 of his 82 World Cup victories at Lake Louise in 44 career starts there.
Vonn was so successful there that in the middle of her career, the place began to be called Lake Lindsey unofficially.
Mikaela Shiffrin earned his first World Cup downhill and super-G wins at Lake Louise.
The season-ending World Championship Finals in March in Saalbach, Austria, will switch from a one-week event to spread over two weekends. A proposal published earlier in May outlined technical races in slalom and giant slalom on the first weekend and speed races in downhill and super-G on the second weekend.
With no World Cups in even years, the World Cup Finals will be the most prestigious competition next season.
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